


Introspection (Breathe Easy)

by Krasimer



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blind Soldier: 76, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Light Angst, M/M, Memories, No Dialogue, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Regret, What Could Have Been
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-19 19:54:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7375288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is something to learn about yourself when all you can do is think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Widowmaker - Reaper - Soldier:76

They kept her with her handlers so that she wouldn't break loose.

Unlike the others that had been dragged into Talon's grip, Amelie Lacroix was not docile under their reprogramming of her mind. Without her handlers, she was a loose cannon, a desperately fired shot from a gun in the hands of a dying woman. They'd had to take her in for retraining more times than could be counted and without a handler, she was likely to break free. Somewhere, underneath the persona of Widowmaker, Amelie Lacroix still existed. Her heart was buried in there, even if she could not feel it that much anymore.

Every mission she had ever gone on alone, there had been a triggered memory.

One of them had even seen her attacking the agents sent in to stop her from failing her objectives. She had broken several limbs before they'd had the sense to sedate her. A spider's heart does beat, and would continue to do so even when they had tried to destroy her.

Amelie Lacroix was a force to be reckoned with when she woke up.

Widowmaker was kept on a tight leash and a reminder of pain if she diverted from the path set out for her.

 

~

 

Somewhere, buried deep, below even the foundations he'd once had, there was a man who would have made a good father.

Gabriel Reyes would have loved to have been a father.

His mask rests in his hands as he stares blankly at the wall, still somewhat bleary. There are claws on his hands and layers of thick black cloth that hide his skin. Beneath them, he is mottled, a mixture of dead, alive, and something else. Regenerating and dying just as quickly, as if it's a race to see which one wins. 

In the old days, there would have been a set of dog tags rattling against his chest.

Now there is a hollowness inside of him, a roar of a storm and the urge to kill. His hands twitch, eager and willing to follow the path set out for him.

In another life, he would probably have a child. Big brown eyes and blond hair (there is only one he would have made a life with) and small hands clutching to his pant leg when faced with something new. A small, living person in his world, brightening the dark edges. Chubby cheeks and a bright smile, small feet and dark eyes and...

Gabriel Reyes would have loved being a father.

The Reaper has no time for life or living. Death is an art he creates, brings forth when there is nothing else. More have died by his hands than he can count. The world he lives in is dark, no room for the hope and idealism he'd once, stupidly, had.

A child does not belong in his darkness, no one does.

(In another life, he would have settled with his fellow soldier and they would have made wonderful parents.)

 

~

 

The wound on his side is still bleeding.

His vision, faked by the visor he wore constantly, is blurred and broken. The visor is cracked, running half as efficiently. There were still more on the way, Talon agents seeming to sprout from the cracks in the walls. He is outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered in a way he has not been in ages. There is something to be said for having a backup, but the only person he trusted to watch his back is dead.

(He mourns.)

Back against the wall, running low on ammo, chest heaving with each painful breath, the Soldier closes his eyes for just a moment. Everything is chaotic, his every movement almost painfully telegraphed. There's an exhaustion in his gait, his steps heavy as he walks away from the wreckage of his most recent fight. If he stops for more than a second, he will never get started again. Old soldiers never die, but good god, sometimes they wish they could.

('I can't lose them again,' he thinks as he watches the newest batch of Overwatch recruits. They are young and so full of the hope he has long since lost.)

His breathing is labored, each one sounding like a fish out of the water as he struggles his way through. 

(One day, he will find everything he is looking for, will find all the answers and finally, Finally, be able to rest. This is not that day.)

The streets are dark around him, his mind going back to a young girl with big brown eyes that reminded him of what could have been, her fear draining away to expose wonder. To expose delight and happiness and curiosity. Her smile had been a moment of good, his head too fogged with old memories when he saw it and thought of someone else. She had asked if he was a hero and he remembered the posters that had been passed around with their faces on them. He remembers the man he had worked beside, worked with, had even started to fall in...

(He would have asked him to marry him someday.)

(Bigger things took precedence and he regrets.)

It was better to never think about things like that.


	2. Jesse McCree - Lena Oxton - Hanzo Shimada

It has been a long, dusty lifetime full of watching the sun rise and set on the remains of his regrets.

Jesse McCree is not someone who sits to appreciate his failures. The Deadlock gang, before that it was the fall of Overwatch and Blackwatch and he could have done something to fix that mess, he thinks as he pulls a cigarillo out of a pouch and lights it, looking out over the landscape. The Spanish curse sits on the tip of his tongue, the quicksilver flare of anger for the loss of his two team-mates making his head spin. Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes and the happiness the two idiots could'a had. If he'd just stayed, just stepped in and stayed put when things all up and went sour...

Regrets are not his strong suit.

The billow of smoke from between his lips feels like something out of the old folktales his Abuela told him when he was a kid. Souls and smoke and ferrying across rivers...Things he had come to believe as he got older. 

(A ghost wanders the battlefields and news spreads. A man dressed in black with the mask of an owl, Death himself, come to ferry away the Newly Dead.)

A shiver trickles down his spine and he hears his Abuela's soft voice once more, telling him to be aware of people walking over his grave. With another sigh, Jesse rolls his head around, popping his neck and grunting with the shifting bone.

When he feels relaxed, his cigarillo in hand and his eyes drifting closed in the last light of day, everything feels pulled-taut. As if the world is waiting for something more from Jesse McCree, a man on the run from a gang wantin' him dead. The sun feels good on his skin, his tired body sore and aching. 

From deep within one of his pouches, a beeping noise struggles to be heard.

His eyes fly open and his heart just about stops because that noise - he knows that noise, that noise is the one calling him home. Overwatch ain't come-a-callin' in ages and to hear it in the here and now is almost like insanity settlin' in.

With a grin, McCree answers the call.

 

~

 

Time goes by in a blur for Lena Oxton.

One moment is spent hopping from rooftop to rooftop, the next is 30 miles away in a plain field, staring at the stars in all their glory. Moments like those only last for a little while before the quickstep-beat of her heart is tugging at her again. 

For the last several years of her life, she has not been able to keep still for longer than five minutes. One single twist of fate and she was changed forever.

Her dreams drag at her.

Dreams of big houses, of people in clothing she only barely remembers from history books. Her mind is a whirl of noises and colors and voices and she is _grateful_. It is absolute chaos in her head, barely a moment of rest, but she is thankful for it because at least there is still something. When the experiment had gone wrong, the temporal shift dragging her out of time and into someplace...Else...

She doesn't like to think about it. 

She was twenty-five then, she is twenty-five now.

There is suspicion, doubt, worry, anger at the idea of her never changing again. She does not know if she will age, does not know if what keeps her in the proper flow of time is what keeps her from aging. She is a rock in a river, the flow parting around her as she stays within it. It cannot move her, she cannot be moved.

She is alive.

For all the worry over her existence, her survival, she is alive and well, even if she is unchanged from the moment the test program went wrong. She stops to breathe on a rooftop, looks up at the stars above her head and wonders if they are the same ones she used to look at before everything changed.

She breathes in the scent of dust, of petrichor as the rain starts to fall around her. Her hands come up to shield the accelerator, keep it safe from damage, but there is no damage to it in rain. A nervous habit born of not knowing her limits or the limits of the device.

She is ageless and she is endless.

Maybe it's better that way.

World always could use a few more heroes. 

 

~

 

There is a weakness in his heart.

That is what the clan heads would have said, that he was too soft, too willing to allow ruin and destruction. He followed their commands, destroyed the life of one of the few who understood him in any sort of way. 

Now he is alone, has nothing except for his regret and a heart broken thrice, all of the family he once loved dead and gone. 

He stands alone in the world.

There is talk of an uprising as he travels, word of an Omnic resurgence, whispers of a more dangerous menace in the form of a wraith who cuts down those who would get in its way. There is talk of more death and destruction than the world has seen in ages.

When he was younger, he would turn to his brother and speak with him, remind him of the good in the world when there were tears trailing down his face. 

His brother had always been the one with the tender heart.

Hardly befitting the son of a Yakuza, hardly the material for an heir. He had known, going into their fight that they were both being made an example of. Genji for his partying and loose behavior, himself for his allowance of it. 

His hands clenched in the material of his kimono, threatening to rip the fabric as he tried to calm the storm in his mind. The dragons were roaring, distant figures screaming out their disapproval of his lingering sadness and hatred. He had not only rid himself of a brother, he had to remember, he had destroyed one of their own.

It was a wonder they had not abandoned him.

He would not have blamed them if they had, would have accepted it with a growing sadness in his heart. Knowing it was his fault, he would have cleaved his arm from his body if they had left him to be alone. 

He was not worthy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hanzo, why. You're making me sad. 
> 
>  
> 
> Anyway, sorry for the long-ish disappearance, some of my other stories demanded a bit more attention.

**Author's Note:**

> So there should be about 7 chapters when I am done with this little experiment of mine. Currently trying to get a feel for each character without having a full handle on how to write their dialogue just yet.


End file.
